


The Human Condition

by rivendellrose



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Culture, F/M, Gen, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 18:21:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: Written for Spring Kinkfest on Livejournal in 2007.Prompt: "Babylon 5, Lennier-->Delenn: Love, pure and chaste and from afar, or not so much - is this the allure of all humanity?""A human would take the chance. A human would stand up, brush aside prayer, and go to her. The ambition of humans knows no limits."





	

The day just past, like so many in the last year, had been terrible for Delenn. So much had gone wrong, so many small hurts pained her in a universe that owed her so much. She returned to her quarters after a long day of meetings and politely refused the meal he had prepared for her. She walked past the prayer candles, first, then turned and regarded them eyes that spoke of unending deserts under darkness without a star in sight. To see the light of her eyes so dimmed, it was as though all they fought for already lay before her in dust. 

He went to her, and she, unashamed and unaware, broke on him like waves on stone. He was refuge for her, because it didn’t matter what he saw. 

With her cheek rested on his shoulder, her strange hair tickling his neck and jaw, and her arms twined around his shoulders, he thought that he could easily accept that lot. If he could be near to her... if he could give her just one comfort that Sheridan couldn’t, have just one corner of her being that the other man could not touch...

Of course he could. For all that Sheridan loved her - he did, Lennier knew, though sometimes he wished not to admit it to himself - he did not know her as Lennier did. He could not. He was Human, an alien to their ways, and Delenn still kept many secrets from him. Her past, her guilt, her shame... all of these things she hid from her would-be mate, tucked away and buried in shadows and crannies where he could not see or did not understand what was before him. More than that, the daily moments of her life were a mystery to the Human. He did not see her rise in the morning, understood nothing of the prayers and rituals that she devoted every morning, noon, and night. He was not there when she brushed out her hair, still so careful and awkward with this alien appendage attached to her. How she took her tea, what foods she preferred, how she traced holy symbols with one hand, a habitual, physical meditation, while she studied diplomatic briefs... these were the mysteries that John Sheridan could not touch. 

In his studies of Human literature and spirituality, Lennier had discovered a concept of ‘love from afar’ that was entirely alien to his experience. The idea seemed to be that a person - traditionally a male, but in more recent literature either gender seemed to apply equally - fell in love with a person so far distanced from them that the two individuals might never speak. This love was, by necessity of its nature, most often both unrequited and unspoken, and often encompassed either opposing social classes or a forbidding power structure of some kind which made association between the two partners entirely impossible.

The latter of these sets of requirements was familiar to Lennier. Social structures and rank dominated the Minbari lifestyle, and it was something of a comfort to discover that humans really were not so different from them in that manner as they sometimes appeared. The rest, however...

“Lennier?”

“I’m here.”

Delenn sighed. “Forgive me.” 

He pulled back enough to look at her, regretting immediately the loss of her warm hair against his cheek. “There is nothing to forgive, Delenn.”

“You know all that I have done. You were there, in the Dreaming, you saw...”

He shook his head. “I saw a great leader giving what seemed the only possible order under the circumstances as we understood them.”

“Our understanding - _my_ understanding was wrong. I should have been more cautious, more patient, I should have pursued peace...”

“Delenn. What brings this now?” 

“The Humans mistrust us. Their media... they say I have corrupted John. That I have lied to him and twisted his mind against them.”

“They lie.” He wants to touch her, then - to caress her cheek or to lift her chin, to make her meet his eyes, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Among all that she is to him, she is still Satai. When she comes to him, he may hold her, but no more. 

“They tell a truth deeper than what he understands. They know me better than he does, without ever looking on me.”

This is untrue, of course, and he tells her as much. But it nags at him, after she retreats into her private chamber, and comes back to him while he kneels on the carpeted deckplates giving their evening prayers alone so she may sleep undisturbed. 

John Sheridan knows only the smallest facets of who and what Delenn is, yet he thinks he knows the whole. He thinks he knows enough to love her. He truly believes that he can love her with only the little moments that he sees, building them into another creature in his mind, a woman sometimes completely unfamiliar and alien to the one that Lennier knows. Is this the allure of humanity - that their minds are so unsophisticated that they can fall in love without truly knowing the object of their affection? He had thought, when he followed her into the dreaming and viewed the sins of her past, that he was being blessed with intimacy beyond his dreams. Sheridan knows nothing of that day aboard their caste's flagship - doesn't know she was there, doesn't even know that it was her own teacher his people murdered that day. How can he claim to love her without knowing the depth of her soul, Lennier wondered, but now he wonders if that isn't the wrong way to examine the question. 

How could _she_ love him if he knew?

Sheridan is innocent, unaware of the transgressions and responsibility that weigh down her mind. He knows nothing of their ways, nothing of her past, nothing of all that has been asked of her, all that she must be willing to do for her people, for the universe. And because of this, Lennier realizes, she can accept his love. He believes her hands and conscience clean, and with him she can pretend it is true. He has never seen the dark corners of her past that she wishes to forget, and so with him she may feel for a time as though they do not exist. 

Lennier knows her. He does not judge, does not blame her or despise her for the things she has done. And yet, with him, she cannot forget. When she looks into the clouded mirrors of the human’s eyes, she sees herself as he sees her - blameless and innocent, without a trace of blood on her hands. More than that, she sees in him the forgiveness that she seeks. In some small way, if she can love and be loyal to this human, bring his people into the light, it may absolve her guilt. 

He sits awake and considers all of this while she sleeps in the next room. 

He could not understand the fascination of love from a distance. It seemed to him as though a love that knew nothing of the person it attached to. What could a lover know who had never so much as stood beside his beloved, who never watched her go about her daily duties, or listened to her worry over the trials of her calling? What kind of love was it that professed willingness to die for the object of desire, but knew nothing of the simplest, most basic facets of her life? What foods she preferred, what memories of long-past mistakes pained her, what hopes and dreams she held for the future... these details formed the pigments that painted love, in his mind, and brought it from the realm of mere infatuation into a holy calling. 

At least... mostly holy. Sometimes... some nights, especially - nights like this, nights when she was so close to him, when they were separated only by nominal shell of the poly-aluminum door that partitioned her sleeping chamber from the rest of her quarters, when the station was so quiet that he could almost swear he heard her breathing over the constant low white noise of the station’s generators and when it seemed he couldn’t escape the thought of her, the echo of her words, the smell of her layered over and over in these rooms that she lived in... 

Sometimes he failed.

The next day, week, even month would be filled with penitence and guilt, and he would swear off impure such impure thoughts forever. He would insist by all that was holy - the old books and scrolls and words of wisdom, the blood of his clan and most of all the sweet, cold fire of her eyes - that he would do better. He would be good. He would be worthy without ever dreaming to see that worth rewarded. And for a time he would succeed. But it never lasted.

He sits awake through the night, wishing he had the courage to go to her, fall to his knees beside her pallet, beg her leave to do anything, give her anything, please her in any way. He lets himself dream, just for a moment, that she might accept him - that Sheridan might be gone, out of her mind, or simply so far out of mind that neither of them consider him as they kneel together on the floor by her bed. The heavy fabric of her robes falls away. Her hair tickles, dark and alien against his chest. Their lips meet as hands that have touched only stone make prayers to warm, soft skin, and the stars outside the station’s metal walls whirl with the beauty of her eyes. Bodies entwine, murmuring prayers and oaths in their own tongue, not the pale and shallow language of the humans they work with. In his mind, they join together and never part, and everything is as his heart has always whispered it should be. In his mind, she accepts his love once he shows the courage to show it to her.

A human would take the chance. A human would stand up, brush aside prayer, and go to her. The ambition of humans knows no limits - they build empires and walk among the gods without even an effort at humility, and the sum of all this ambition falls to nothing in a few nights of the universe’s endless whirling. 

Lennier cannot be a human, even for Delenn. He can, however, be what he is - a Minbari. No less, and no more. Minbari are patient. They know that every star is nothing without the endless sea of other around them, and they embrace the humility that allows them to walk slowly through nights that never end while other races spin out their time too quickly. 

A stone’s throw from the heaven of her presence, Lennier sits in the darkness and goes slowly mad with desire.


End file.
